The Computing Center was not far away. Though it had many rooms, its heart was a cavernous square space with white walls and a white floor waxed to a thick glossy sheen. The white ceiling was composed of square fluorescent light panels in a checkerboard pattern. Practically all of the room was occupied by disc memory units: brown-and-blue cubes, spaced in a grid to form a seemingly endless matrix of six-foot aisles. At the center of the room was an open circle, and at the center of that area stood the Central Processing Unit of the Janus 64. A smooth triangular column five feet on a side and twelve feet high, it would have touched the ceiling except that above was a circular opening about forty feet across, encircled by a railing so that observers could stand and look into the core of the Computing Center.
Around the CPU were a few other large machines: secondary computers to organize the tasks being fed to the Janus 64, array processors, high-speed laser printers, a central control panel and the like. But closest of all was the Operator's Station, a single video terminal, and tonight the operator was Consuela Gorm, high priestess of MARS. She had volunteered to do the job on this night of partying, when the only people still using the computer in the adjacent Terminal Room were the goners, the hopelessly addicted hackers who had nothing else to live for.
The only sounds were the whine of the refrigeration units, which drew away the heat thrown off by the tightly packed components of the Janus 64; the high hum of the whirling memory discs, miltiplied by hundreds; and the pitter-pat of Consuela's fingertips across the keypad of the Operator's Station. She was hunkered down there, staring hypnotized into the screen, and behind her Fred Fine stood thin and straight as the CPU itself. Tonight they were testing Shekondar Mark V, their state-of-the-art Sewers & Serpents simulation program. Now, at a few minutes before midnight, they had worked out the few remaining bugs and they stood transfixed as their program did exactly what it was supposed to.
"Looks like a routine adventure," mumbled Consuela.
"But it looks like Shekondar might have generated a werewolf colony in this party's vicinity. I'm seeing a lot of indications of lycanthropic activity."
"You'd want plenty of silver arrows on this campaign." "With this level of activity, you'd want a cleric specialized in lycanthropes," scoffed Consuela.
Fred Fine was perfectly aware of that. He was merely making conversation so Consuela would not realize he was thinking intently about something, and try to beat him to the punch. Yes, the werewolf colony was obvious-- it was a large one, probably east-northeast in the Mountains of Krang. Only large-scale organization could account for the lack of wolfsbane and garlic, which were usually abundant in this biome. But Fred Fine was concerned with observations on a far grander scale. Though nothing was catastrophically wrong, something was very strange, and Fred Fine found that he was covered with goosebumps. He tapped a foot nervously and scanned the descriptions scrolling past on the screen.
"Listen for birds!" he hissed.
Consuela ordered an Aural Stimuli Report, specifying Avians as field of interest.
NO AVIAN SOUNDS DETECTABLE, said Shekondar Mark V.
"Damn!" said Fred Fine. "Let's have the alchemist test one of his magical substances-- say, some of the fire-starting fluid." MAGICAL COMBUSTIBLES AND EXPLOSIVES FAIL TO FUNCTION.
"Uh-oh! All characters jettison all magical items immediately!" SMALL FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS IN ALCHEMICAL SUBSTANCES.
"Good. We'll get farther away."
LARGE EXPLOSIONS. NOXIOUS SMOKE. NO INJURIES DUE TO WIND DIRECTION.
"Lucky! Forgot even to check for that. My character will try turning on his pocket calculator."
ELECTRONIC DEVICES FAIL TO FUNCTION.
"Wait a minute," said the astonished Consuela. "What is this? I don't know of anything that can cause disruption of magic and technology at the same time! Some kind of psionics, maybe?" "I don't know. I don't know what it is.,, "We wrote this thing. We have to know what's in it." "Aural Stimuli Report, General. Quick!"
DEEP RUMBLING CONSISTENT WITH TEMBLOR OR LARGE SUBTERRANEAN MOVEMENT.
"Can't be an earthquake. We'll head for solid rock, that should protect us. Head uphill!"
MOVEMENT SPEED HALVED BY TEMBLOR. ROCK OUTCROPPING REACHED IN SIX TURNS. EXTREMELY LOUD HISSING. GASEOUS ODOR. GROUND BECOMES WARM.
"It's almost like a Dragon," said Consuela in a constricted, terrified voice, "but from down in the earth."
"God! I can't think of what the hell this is!"
ONE HUNDRED METERS TO YOUR NORTH EARTH BULGES UPWARD. BULGE IS FIFTY METERS IN DIAMETER AND RISING QUICKLY. EARTH CRACKS OPEN AND YOU SEE A GLISTENING SURFACE....
The terminal went blank. From just behind them came a violent scream, like a buzzsaw wrenching to a stop in a concrete block. They knew it though they had never heard it before; it was the sound of a disc unit dying, the sound made when the power was cut off and the automatic readers (similar to the tone-arms of phonographs) sank into, and shredded, the hysterically spinning magnetic discs. It was to them what the snapping of a horse's leg is to a jockey, and when they spun around they were astonished and horrified to see a curtain of water pouring onto the floor from the circular walkway overhead. Not more than a dozen feet from the base of the Janus 64, the ring was spreading inward.